People take their photos with fans bearing photos of the members of South Korean boy band BTS outside Tokyo Dome where the band's concert will be held in Tokyo, Japan, Tuesday. / Reuters-Yonhap

By Park Jin-haiBTS' popularity in Japan has remained unscathed, despite the sweeping bashing among Japanese media outlets surrounding a T-shirt BTS member Jimin wore in March 2017. The incident prompted TV Asahi to cancel the group's live performance the day before they were scheduled to appear on a Friday night show on the channel.It also caused some Japanese intellectuals to raise questions regarding possible political motivation behind the cancellation. Tokyo Sports on Oct. 26 reported the controversy first, condemning BTS member Jimin for wearing a T-shirt bearing a photo of Koreans celebrating their liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945 in one corner and another showing the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, with the words "patriotism," "our history" and "liberation" printed on it, calling it "an anti-Japanese act." Jimin was seen for two seconds wearing the shirt in the "Burn the Stage" YouTube documentary that follows the band's 300-day sold-out world tour journey. However, the controversy went viral online after Japan's ultra-nationalist and far-right extremist group Zaitokukai picked up the issue and staged an anti-Korean protest.

Controversial T-shirt design

Japan's TV Asahi gave in and canceled the group's performance on its flagship music program "Music Station." Japanese broadcaster NHK and Fuji TV followed suit axing BTS' scheduled appearances and many media outlets called Jimin wearing the shirt "politically motivated."Yoo Jae-soon, a publisher at JPNews, an online news outlet covering issues related to Japan for Koreans, says the U.S. atomic bombings of Japan have been a sensitive issue for Japanese people. "It is customary that around Aug. 15 Japanese media sheds light on the atomic bomb victims. Although Japan is a country that committed war crimes, they highlight the fact they have been victims of nuclear weapons. So Japanese people are very sensitive about atomic bomb issues," she said. "With the photo having Korean people hailing liberation from Japan, together with the mushroom cloud photo on the T-shirt, it was wrongly interpreted (by Japanese media) as mocking Japan's nuclear victims."With that said, the T-shirt controversy came at an awkward time following a diplomatic row between Seoul and Tokyo over South Korea's Supreme Court ruling last month in favor of four Korean victims of forced labor during World War II. On Oct. 30, the court ordered Japanese steelmaker Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp. to pay each victim 100 million won ($89,000) in compensation, but the Japanese government immediately denounced the ruling as unacceptable. Billboard wrote on Nov. 9, "The BTS T-shirt incident certainly didn't help matters, but it's hardly the sole reason for this cancellation among issues that are largely rooted in long-standing political and cultural stances between the countries." It added, "If it was the only issue, BTS' previous Japanese television appearances (including a December 2017 performance on Japan Music Station Super Live) would have logically been canceled, too." Amid sweeping BTS bashing in Japan, some critics expressed worries about the way Japan reacted to the incident.Daisuke Tsuda, a Japanese music critic and author of "Survive the Information War" said on Twitter, "It is horrible and serious that the press and politicians only respond in one manner." "It is serious that those journalists and intellectuals, who turned a blind eye to the hatred toward Koreans on the internet, wish not to get involved, but there are growing fake news outlets carrying extremists' thoughts as if it is public opinion." The Japanese news website Litera on Nov. 10 also wrote, "The atomic bomb T-shirt has been an excuse to attack Korea. If they know anything about pop music of today, they would know what great feats BTS has achieved in the global music industry. Behind the hatred toward the band lies Japan's jealousy toward the Korean music group that has achieved more than what Japanese musicians have before." Yet, the criticism has had limited impact on the band. Starting with their sold-out Tokyo Dome concerts on Tuesday and Wednesday, they will continue their concerts in Osaka, Nagoya and Fukuoka. Even after the Oct. 26 report, their ninth single "Fake Love / Airplane Pt. 2" released on Nov. 7 topped Oricon's Daily Singles Chart reaching 327,342 sales in its first day. It is more sales than BTS achieved with their eighth Japanese single "MIC Drop/DNA/Crystal Snow" last December, which sold 269,861 in a day. Since the release, BTS has remained in the top place as of Tuesday. The band's global fan club, BTS ARMY, deployed the hashtag "#LiberationTshirtNotBombTshirt" to claim the atomic bomb image was used to show the atrocity of war and that the mushroom cloud doesn't glorify the use of the bomb. Between 1,500 and 2,000 Koreans died in the Nagasaki bombing, and between 5,000 and 8,000 perished in the earlier Hiroshima bombing. Local experts predict that Japanese right-wing claims in the YouTube era cannot wield as much power as before. "In the current music market, nationalism has limited impact on singers. The public doesn't care about those right-wing instigators trying to spread the national rhetoric and finding a reason for their existence from it. If it happened in the past when singers leaned heavily on TV appearances to earn fame, the band could have been negatively affected. But, now it is the YouTube era," culture critic Jung Duk-hyun said. "Even if TV stations boycott the band, fans will use YouTube to share their content and keep on coming to their concerts." Music critic Cha Woo-jin said now Japan's cultural consumers are a different generation. "They move around networks based on their own tastes they take high pride in. Multiple elements of age, sex, language and culture affect their tastes, not wielded by political controversy," the critic said. "Even with Japan's media boycott against all K-pop singers, their measure could have symbolic meaning at best, because fans living in the multimedia era will not care."